Occidental maintains CO land rights as part of $1.33B deal

HOUSTON — Weld County’s largest energy producer is maintaining most of its mineral rights in the Denver-Julesburg Basin after selling millions of acres in mineral rights in the tri-state region.

Houston-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: OXY) said it had agreed to sell 5.5 million acres of land and mineral acreage in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming to New York-based Orion Mine Finance for $1.33 billion.

However, the company said it retained about 2.5 million mineral acres in Colorado for its continued energy production.

“We will retain our core oil and gas assets in the Rockies, including the prolific DJ Basin in Colorado and the highly prospective Powder River Basin in Wyoming,” CEO Vicki Hollub said in a statement.

Orion said it mainly made the bid to acquire the world’s largest deposits of trona, a mineral with wide uses in manufacturing.

The original sale offering included 140,000 acres worth of mineral rights for sale in northern Larimer County, along with 50,000 acres in Weld County near the Wyoming border and fewer than 10,000 acres each in Logan and Sedwick counties.

The state of Wyoming was potentially interested in bidding on some of the property within that state in late June.

Occidental has aimed to cut down on expenses since the COVID-19 pandemic closed the tap on fuel demand around the world due to stay-at-home orders meant to slow the spread of the virus.

The company posted an $8.35 billion loss in the last quarter, with $6.6 billion of that coming from impairment write-offs from lower values of its continuing assets and discontinued wells.

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